Pale Horse
by Ayame Nekura
Summary: "He felt like an animal with an old injury that had healed all wrong, he had continuously crawled away into safe place after safe place. Each sanctuary he had carved out and created for himself had been stolen... He would die, and this room would never be discovered. His legacy would be lies. His lies were more valuable than any truth he could ever tell."


Disclaimer: I hereby declare that I do not own _Harry Potter_ or the Potterverse. JKR is the creator of the Potterverse and all its intellectual properties are belong to her...and also Warner Bros. I make no money from writing fanfiction and this is only an expression of love for the beautiful world she created for us. Thank you JKR for allowing me to borrow these characters and play with them. In this story I make reference to a children's book I grew up with, _The Redheaded Woman _by Helen Eustis and illustrated by Reinhard Michl. Intellectual and financial rights to this book remain with them and with Star&Elephant Books.

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Pale Horse

The door crashed against the stonewall and echoed strangely in the narrow hallway. Severus Snape stormed through his private laboratory, the heavy black cloak of his Death Eater robes billowing like storm clouds in his wake. He snarled his password as he approached the large oak bookcase at the back of the room and barely broke his stride as a section slid open for him. An even narrower hallway opened to a room with a vaulted ceiling that quickly filled itself with soft light as he entered. Severus slashed his wand through the air and the bookcase closed quietly behind him.

He tore his cloak from his shoulders and realized he was still holding his Death Eater mask in his hand. It seemed to grin at him. He threw it as hard as he could against the wall and something inside him snapped when the mask refused to shatter. Out of him came a sound that was barely human, it came from a place somewhere between anger and agony. He turned and struck the oak of the room's entrance until his fist left bloody marks on the wood.

The pain began to set in, he pressed his back to the wall and sighed in relief as he slid to the floor. He rested his head in the hand he hadn't pulverized, and his black hair fell forward to conceal his face. He let one leg lay flat and draped his damaged hand across it, the pain was turning to a deep throbbing that was soothing. It grounded him in a way he needed desperately. He closed his eyes and focused on the pain, on the feeling of his back against the wall, and of the sharpness of his elbow digging into his knee.

He wasn't sure how much time passed. He waited till his breathing slowed before opening his eyes again. The view of the world through his hair wasn't unfamiliar. He scowled at the familiar lankiness of his legs in front of him. They were clad in the deep black trousers of a potion's master, not a schoolboy's uniform. But he still felt like a child again, sulking in a corner... _Snivellus_.

He picked himself up off the floor and raked his hand through his hair. Tilting his head back he breathed deeply through the hawk like nose that garnered so much ridicule. The wooden crossbeams above him glowed in the false light of his secret little room. All light was either candlelight or magical light in the dungeons. He had worked hard to find a spell that would produce a soft natural light that didn't seem artificial or harsh. He couldn't work with candlelight here, its light was too warm, he'd tried.

Sighing, he flicked his wand, "Finite" his deep voice thrummed in his chest as a gentle whisper moved through the room. His stasis spell lifted, and the unnatural stillness dissipated. It wasn't until he had developed this particular spell that he had realized the way the castle seemed to breathe. Hogwarts had a strange sort of life of its own, it always had. It was clear enough in the way the staircases moved, and things appeared and disappeared. But he had never noticed its presence so deeply as when he first cast his stasis spell and it was as if the entire room held its breath. It had always been unnerving, and he usually lifted it as soon as he entered. It had always reminded him too much of death, of the moment when a person stops breathing. It's not always certain which breath will be the last. The moment of anticipation for the next breath that never comes, that lurch of realization that it hasn't happened yet, and then that it isn't going to happen ever again. That was what the room felt like under stasis.

He picked up his cloak and shook it out before hanging it by the door, he wouldn't be able to ignore it laying there and it would only serve to remind him of his loss of control if he left it. He did however, leave the mask where it had landed by the rolls of linen. It sat tilted on its side, giving the empty face a manic edge. He glared at it as he unbuttoned his frock coat and rolled up his sleeves to get to work. He paused when he reached the first hint of black ink under his left sleeve. He sneered at his reflex to keep it hidden. This was one place where the sleeve should be rolled up. Here he didn't have to hide it under sleeves or buttons or robes, and he didn't have to display it with false pride the way he had to in the company of some. Here he worked with sleeves rolled up. It wasn't as if he wasn't always aware of it. He saw it getting dressed in the morning, when he showered; he felt it tingle when the Dark Lord was pleased, sting when he was displeased, and burn when he called. It was there in front of him when he rolled over in bed, his arm tucked under his head. It was always there. He rolled his sleeve up to the elbow, the black ink stark against his pale forearm. A stain that had become a part of him. The snake rolled and curled around the skull that stared at him with empty sockets, and Severus Snape forced himself to look at it. He felt hollow. The throbbing in his hand grew stronger and he glanced at his split knuckles. He whispered a healing charm over them and watched as his flesh mended itself, melting together like hot wax. He had enough scars and the wounds would only interfere and contaminate ingredients.

He got to work, attending the various concoctions on his worktable. Some were bubbling away and needed to be stirred; some were slow fires that needed to be tended now that they were out of stasis; some were in the middle of a distillation process that he had to mind. He tended to everything before turning to a large apothecary cabinet and contemplating its many small drawers. He decided some time with a mortar and pestle would do him some good and opened a drawer to select a number of beautiful blue stones. Sighing to himself he realized is his present mood he shouldn't be working with one of his more expensive ingredients and put the lapis lazuli back. Instead he withdrew a small bag of well-preserved insects and emptied a handful of them into the marble bowl of the mortar. He took a seat and began to crush them with no small sense of satisfaction, it was with relish that he watched the deep red pigment begin to stain the marble. This was something no one could take from him. He loved his potions work but it had been perverted and misused; as a Death Eater he made countless potions that inflicted pain and death. As a member of the Order of the Phoenix he made countless potions to counteract his own actions as a Death Eater; it was maddening. It was rare that he was able to truly enjoy his work in the lab anymore. He was still able to achieve a flow state as he brewed, but any feeling of pure enjoyment was snuffed out by the looming presence of his two Masters. He felt his lip curl as he pondered the age-old question, _can any man serve two Masters and be loyal to either_?* There was a question beneath it that few thought to ask but that he asked every day - _Can any man serve two Masters and be loyal to himself?_ Today especially, he had no fucking idea.

He added another handful of beetles to pulverize. He worked through muscle memory, his hands seeming to move of their own accord. This was what he needed, just to disappear for a few precious moments. He relaxed into the comfort and ease of expertise. He loosened his grip on time and allowed himself to drift as he worked.

He returned to himself only when his mortar was full of red powder. He emptied it into a clean glass jar taken from his shelves. He had plenty of other pigments brewing, he didn't want to have too many cauldrons on at the same time. He had been more and more distracted lately when he made his visits here and it would only further infuriate him if he were to make a careless mistake and ruin weeks or months of work and squander precious ingredients. He brought the mortar and pestle to the sink to wash them. He smoothed his fingers along the marble to remove the deep red staining, he tried and failed to avoid thinking of blood as the water moved the red across his hands.

"_Out, out damned spot!"*_

He laughed with a single sharp exhale through his nose at the melodramatic whisper in his mind. But the derisive smile that had begun to curl the corners of his mouth quickly vanished as the whisper continued to one of the next lines of the play,

"_Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him." _He paled and carefully set the mortar and pestle aside so as not to drop them.

He had reported to Dumbledore after his meeting with the Death Eaters, as usual. But their conversation had been far from ordinary.

"_But what of my soul?"*_

He was entirely alone in this. He had to kill, to murder, his only…what? Friend? Albus what he closest thing he had to a friend. _At least this one asked to be killed… Of course he asked you, he knows you have such a talent for killing the ones you care about. _He clenched his fists and walked to the easel.

He began mixing the paints on his palette with a calmness that hovered on the edge of desperation. The clicking sound of the palette knife against the glass was like an anchor of normality and he laid his colors out along the edges of the glass. He'd spread white parchment beneath the palette so he could see what he was mixing, streaks of thin lines cut across the surface in every direction, the glass marred with scratches from the razor he had used for years to scrape it. He grabbed a rag and wiped it clean; the scratches seemed to vanish. He stared at the clean white expanse, the ease of wiping it clean made something in his chest tighten.

He busied himself arranging his supplies and set up a small surface of stretched linen. He had primed a large number of them in advance; cooking the rabbit skin glue he used as primer was not aromatically pleasant and he preferred to make a large batch and prime as many surfaces as possible for future use. He kept them in racks across the room, rows of blank surfaces next to rows of finished paintings tucked out of sight. He preferred the traditional primer to modern gesso, the whiteness of a blank surface always bothered him, and he loathed the slight feeling of plastic he could detect with his fingers. Gesso and acrylic were too muggle for him. He was not the bigot he pretended to be, but the inventions of modern muggles lacked appreciation for ritual and longevity. They lacked the same beauty and richness of soul.

He couldn't bear to paint one of his usual subjects, he eyes raked the studio. His black gaze came to rest upon the mask still laying on the floor across the room, mocking him. He sighed and went to collect it. He hovered a small table over to the easel and went about creating a small still life. _You could just as easily paint a jar of brushes or a bowl of fruit, but no, you've got to paint the damn mask_. He rolled his eyes at himself as he arranged a vase of dead flowers for the scene. They had been used for a previous still life and withered, forgotten in a corner as he had attended to his pigments over the last several studio sessions. They had still looked strangely beautiful in a macabre, _vanitas__4_ sort of way, and he hadn't been able to bring himself to dispose of them. He arranged everything to his aesthetic satisfaction, setting up a backdrop and changing the lighting.

He painted for hours and his mind began to quiet, he became absorbed in the process and eventually the mask began to lose its meaning. It ceased mocking him and instead became merely shape and shadow, color and light. He moved back and forth, his tall and slender frame oscillating before his easel, similar at times to the way a cobra moves before a flute. It was a dance to him that had become second nature, it was necessary to make good decisions in a painting. It was relaxing in its own strange way, on the nights he spent painting he didn't find the need to walk the corridors of the castle for hours before he could find sleep.

He stepped back again and felt he had reached a good stopping place. He would likely return to make finishing touches, there were some areas where he had to wait for a glaze or two to dry, the surfaces were charmed to remain unaffected by the stasis spell. He had mediums to extend the workability of his paints. In general, oil paints need no help drying slowly. He enjoyed remaining bound to the drying time of the paints and mediums; he never begrudged a potion the time it needed to brew. It felt similar. He enjoyed these arts that required perfect timing, it was strange he would excel at them when his timing in life could be so poor when it mattered most.

As he assessed the unfinished painting the mask slowly became a mask again, and as he watched it change, as its empty sockets filled again with things he could not unsee; things he could not undo. He became Severus Snape again. What he had shed for a few precious hours came rushing back with a force that robbed the air from his lungs. He looked down at the hand still holding the brush, the Dark Mark grinned up at him. His fists clenched with enough force the brush snapped, splintered, and cut into his palm. The pain was enough to tip him over the edge. He threw the brush and heaved the nearest object at the wall, the shattering of glass was deeply satisfying. He raked a hand through his black hair and stood there panting with his eyes shut tightly. Every day required perfect control, a flawless performance, he had found himself breaking an increasing number of things in this room. What had he thrown? He glanced at the wall, broken glass glittered, and a thick red stain blossomed across the stone wall, it looked as though he'd bashed someone's head against it. His hands dropped to his sides and he tilted his head back far enough that he felt his Adam's apple strain at his pale throat. His hair fell back, he looked up at the ceiling and let out a long sigh. It had been the bloody beetles he'd just prepared…at least this time when he'd lost it and hurled a jar of insects it had been at a wall and not at Potter's head. Could that be considered progress?

He snatched the fresh painting off the easel and stalked back to the racks with it. He didn't want it grinning at him first thing the next time he stepped into this room, he had no idea what state of mind he'd be in. If he wanted to finish it, it would be here waiting for him. He set it in an empty slot for unfinished smaller scale surfaces. Below it were finished works stacked together out of sight, but not out of mind. He flipped through them gently with one hand. Faces looked back at him. Young and old, men, women, and even children. He had no idea what moved him to do this. The easy answer was masochism. He wanted to honor them somehow, he supposed, to do something that recognized their humanity…or maybe his own. He'd paint the people he'd killed, and the ones he'd allowed to die through inaction. Perhaps it was an exorcism. Perhaps it was to see their faces filled with something other than the fear he'd instilled before they'd died. He was merciful whenever he could be, but there had been plenty of times when he hadn't had that option; when orders had demanded otherwise, or there'd been those present who would have called his methods into question at inopportune moments. He played his cards carefully and close to the chest, he took risks when he could. But more often than not he had to reserve those risks for the Potter brat and his numerous exploits. He was perpetually testing the limits of stupidity, and others were perpetually paying for it. He had lost count of the times that he had protected the golden trio in some way; obstructed danger, been suspiciously absent, or remained inactive and had to explain it away or fall back on the Dark Lord's trust or patience…and then had no cache to call upon when someone's slow death was expected. His hands slowed even further as he flipped through some of the youngest children.

Each time he returned from a meeting with the Dark Lord he would go to Dumbledore and they would review the meeting in his pensieve. But Albus usually only asked for his memories of the Dark Lord, he did not ask to see what Severus had done in order to remain in the Dark Lord's service, or his good graces. He did not ask to see what it had taken to rise in his ranks, or what it had taken to be forgiven for not being present the night of his resurrection. And Severus did not show him. He could not decide if this was kindness on the old man's part, or cowardice. Severus would give him any memory he requested, he felt equally burdened and ashamed of them. At times he wished someone, anyone would just take them.

He lifted his eyes to the small recess in the wall to his right. He had installed the storage racks in a way that hid it from view when he was in the studio. He had to walk into the racks and chose to look for her to be visible.

He had only painted her once. There were limits to his masochism. It had felt like trespassing to paint her, but he had to. It was a small and simple portrait. Her age was not easily discernible in the painting, it had not been intended to show her at any particular moment in her life. He could see the little girl he had grown up with and fallen in fields with, and he could see the young woman she had become. She was younger than she had been in the end, he hadn't really known her then, and she hadn't been his. She had never been his. In the end she had chosen Potter, shared her life and her laughter with him, and had his child. A bitter taste like venom filled his mouth and he swallowed it down, same as he did every time he so much as looked at the Potter boy. _He should have been…_

Severus propelled himself forward as if moving from the spot he had been standing would help him escape that thought. He stood in front of the small table he'd placed under her portrait, on it lay the traditional stone dish used for the preparation of human painting materials. Bringing paintings to life took more than the spells that most witches and wizards assumed were involved. Every art had its secrets, in the wizarding world this was even more true. The title of Master was bestowed when one had received training that involved such secrets, Magical Arts had lineages, and lineages held centuries upon centuries of secrets that could not be easily learned from any book. Severus would never be a Master painter; his time was nearly up. But there was often overlap within the Magical Arts, and Potions and Painting had quite a few such overlaps. To be a Master of painting one had to be able to bestow memory to a magical portrait or painting, and this took a great deal of Potions expertise.

The Master Severus had trained under had also been a Master painter. It had been impossible to learn about Potions from Master Giordano without learning about Painting as well. It had been the old Pureblood families of Italy that had been patrons to the old Masters that learned how to give them the connection with their dead loved ones they had so desired. Before the relatively recent invention of photography the only way one could see the faces of dead loved ones was with the help of an artist, or the possession of a pensieve, both of which had been even more rare and expensive than they were in this day and age. To endow a painting with memory and life, something was needed of them. Hair of the deceased became what was most commonly used, this was why locks of hair were so often exchanged between lovers. Those who could not afford to hire an artist immediately would sometimes keep their loved one's hair with them in a locket or display it somehow in their home until the finances allowed for the portrait to be created. Muggles took notice and in the Victorian era intricate designs were woven with the hair of those who had passed on and worn as jewelry. It was a meticulous and macabre practice. Severus could appreciate that. What was not known by those untrained by Masters, was that the oldest practices called for bone. Paints earn their names: Bone Black, Carbon Black, Ivory White. Bone of the corpse would be prepared carefully and then charred and burned, the product of this would be used in the creation of pigments and paint. Each magical portrait required the special preparation of every pigment for it to contain the essence of the subject. There were spells cast in the end, but the wand waving only became important when hair began to be used in lieu of bone, rather than as supplementation.

As with most magic, the most power waited in deep and sometimes dark places. The most powerful magics required something of whoever called upon it. So much misconception surrounding the Dark Arts, so often the practices themselves were not dark, but simply uncomfortable for the average witch or wizard. His lip curled slightly; most were content with only tapping the surface of their abilities because they lacked the fortitude to move through their discomfort and dig deeper.

His eyes fell on the lock of strawberry red hair that lay in the stone dish beneath her unmoving portrait. She had always had a gentle wave to her hair and what was left of it curved gracefully and seemed to rest in the stone bowl the way a woman might in her bed. He had bound it with a bit of white ribbon. It had been his mother's. It was all he had left of her really. It was all he had left of either of them.

His mother was hardly one for ribbons or frippery, but every night she had plated her long black hair to one side and tied the braid with the white ribbon. He imagined it was something she had taken with her from her life as a Prince. It was the nicest thing she owned after being disinherited, and after his father had sold everything of value for booze money. The ribbon hadn't been worth enough for him to bother taking it from her. For Severus there were two mothers - the one from his earliest memories, and the pale, cowed creature his father had slowly turned her into. Soft hands and a warm gentle voice reading him to sleep had turned into a blank expressionless face with dull eyes that made it clear she was somewhere else.

Her hair had been so long it had brushed the pages on the book in her lap, the end of her braid had been shaped like a paintbrush. Her hair and the ribbon had whispered when they brushed the pages. He had fallen asleep to that whispering and her quiet, gentle voice. There was one book in particular he remembered, it had been older. The pages had been dogeared and the paper had a different smell to it, the comforting, musty smell of all old books. He could still see his mother's hands in his mind's eye, moving across the pages, following the words that she read aloud, holding it out to him so he could see the pictures. The pictures had been slightly faded but one color had remained brilliant, the red of the woman's hair. In the story the red-haired witch had fallen in love with Death and run away with him. Death was a quiet, tall, and slender man who rode a pale horse, she would climb up behind him and her red hair would stream out behind her as they rode away across the pages of his strange bedtime story. He had wanted Lily to run away with him. It was a childish thought that grew darker and had twisted in on itself as he fell into the service of the Dark Lord. In his childish and perverse fantasies he imagined himself as Death, he imagined himself having the power and respect he had always craved so desperately, that he had never had when he needed it most. He imagined being a Death Eater would slowly remake him as a man that inspired awe; his power and accomplishments would inspire fear and trembling in others. But she would see him, she would understand. She would leave Potter and choose him, she would ride away with him and they would finally be together the way they were meant to be. As a grown man he would have the strength to pull her up onto the horse behind him, her pale and slender arms would snake around his waist and she would hold onto him. Her breath and her laughter would tickle his ear and her red hair would fly behind them as the years fell away and they rode away from everything complicated.

But Severus had got it all wrong.

He wasn't Death. He was the pale horse.

He had brought Death to her door and it had taken her away. Instead of her beautiful red hair flying out behind her as they rose off into the sunset, it had lay messily across the nursery room carpet, it had fallen across her empty, staring eyes as she lay dead on the floor. Whatever power he had believed himself to have gained through fear was illusion, he had not had the power to save her, to stop the events he put in motion. He had begged for her life, offered his own, and thrown himself at the feet of the two most powerful wizards in the world. He had begged Death to spare her. She had been the only light in his life, and Death had taken her. With a _word_ that light had been extinguished. The Dark Lord had killed her with no more consideration than he might give to swatting an insect.

She had always been different to him. She filled every room with energy and warmth. Every dark corner he curled up in, every lash of his father's belt across his small body had been made bearable with her in the world. Every place she was not, was merely a stepping stone to a place where she was. She was a force of nature that had appeared by miracle and skipped through the grey and tattered trappings of his small life. Her red hair was a flame in his memory. The same way the red-haired woman had swirled color across the faded pages of his storybook, she had moved through his life and the flash of her red hair still lit up every memory of her. She had been the greatest light in his life and every part of him had always moved to follow her. She had been everything to him.

And then she was gone. Just gone.

A word and a flash of green light. Empty playground. Empty field. Empty life. Her loss had punched an Evans shaped hole through his core. It was the shape of her absence, and the ache of it…the sheer fucking _ache of it…_the edges remained raw. Unhealed. Sharp. As he had cradled her body on the floor, he had felt a terror and despair he could never have imagined. Every day of the rest of his life had stretched out before him, each one of them colorless and empty of her. Each one had been agony, and the ache had become his heartbeat. It was probably the only decent part of him left. The rest felt hollow.

His hand shook slightly as he reached out to touch the lock of her hair. He looked up into her gentle green eyes and it felt like a benediction.

As his heart continued to pump in his chest everything slowed to a near halt. Like a blossom unfolding, time seemed to lay itself bare and stretch out before him. There was a terrifying crystalline clarity to it all. He saw his death. There was no vision, this was no prescient prediction, no rasping voices behind doors.

He had always known he would die. No. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. On some level, he had always hoped. He had always wanted justice, and served her like a goddess, as best he could. He'd failed her often. But this was always what was right. Every day had been lived with the knowledge that nothing could ever be set right, not truly. Nothing he had done could ever be undone. But he had tried, regardless. An impossible task. But he had always felt that it would take everything he had, down to his last breath, his last drop of blood. This life's mission was stripped of all nobility and would grind him down to dust. He felt the truth of it in that moment, he felt himself disappearing into it, being consumed. He would murder his only remaining friend, and then he would die. He felt an endless expanse of darkness in-between those events, but it seemed more bearable knowing the end was in sight, the end that was deserved. He would leave behind nothing but his many masks, the parts he had played all too well. No one would ever know. But they would live. They would always hate and despise him, but they would be free.

He looked around his sanctuary. He felt like an animal with an old injury that had healed all wrong, he had continuously crawled away into safe place after safe place. Each sanctuary he had carved out and created for himself had been stolen. This last one would remain. The loophole in the vows would die with Albus Dumbledore, the house elves would take the secret of this room to their graves, the spells would protect it indefinitely. The castle's magic would hold it quietly like a memory. He would die, and this room would never be discovered. His legacy would be lies. His lies were more valuable than any truth he could ever tell.

He gazed up at her portrait with a strange sense of relief beginning to spread its way through his heart. He would die for her. No one would ever know, and that was all right.

He was so tired.

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Notes:

1\. A bastardized verse from the Bible (Mathew 6:24) that was referenced in this way in the film _Elizabeth _starring Cate Blanchett

2\. "_Out, out damned spot!" _and the following quote are from Shakespeare's Macbeth

3\. "_But what of my soul?" _is from _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows _by the illustrious JKR

4\. Vanitas – A branch of 17th century Dutch still life paintings showing the ephemeral nature of life. Symbols of death and the passage of time are always present in these paintings to remind the viewer of their inevitability. Look up vanitas and also Dutch still life paintings to see some truly beautiful work. No one does flowers like the Dutch still life painters.


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